Joel Marcus, a young, successful Manhattan DA, stuck in a loveless marriage, is with his beautiful DA girlfriend when he rescues an elderly Haitian woman from muggers. She rewards him with a voodoo ceremony. Now when he dies, his spirit will survive and pass into the one nearest him. When he is, in fact, soon murdered, his spirit does pass into the one nearest him: the black hitman who murdered him. While trying to convince loved ones he's still alive, he's being sought by the police as the prime suspect in his own murder. At the same time, he's in a unique position to learn who the real murderer is—the one who paid for the hit. He's also in a unique position to learn, as a white man, what it's like to be a black man in today's America.